


anaphora

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:13:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28482216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: When Grace comes home from signing the last of her divorce papers, Frankie’s car is in the driveway but she isn’t in the house. When she’s sure Frankie isn’t there, Grace walks out to the studio and breathes in the potpourri of paint and pot. When she’s certain Frankie isn’t there either, she heads back outside and lingers out by the pool for a few minutes before kicking off her shoes, rolling up the hems of her slacks, and heading down to the beach. She stands on the sand just before the smooth patch that’s been flattened by the water. The ocean is blue-gold beneath the late-afternoon sun. She focuses on following each wave in from a far-off point.
Relationships: Frankie Bergstein/Grace Hanson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 72





	anaphora

**Author's Note:**

> Happy new year! I hope 2021 is better for all of us. <3
> 
> An anaphora is a word or phrase repeatedly used to begin successive lines. A thing that happens over and over, and in repetition the meaning grows.

_You could bring me back like a resurrector_  
_I could risk your touch when your dark eyes gleam_

—Houndstooth, “Canary Island”

⁂

When Grace comes home from signing the last of her divorce papers, Frankie’s car is in the driveway but she isn’t in the house. When she’s sure Frankie isn’t there, Grace walks out to the studio and breathes in the potpourri of paint and pot. When she’s certain Frankie isn’t there either, she heads back outside and lingers out by the pool for a few minutes before kicking off her shoes, rolling up the hems of her slacks, and heading down to the beach. She stands on the sand just before the smooth patch that’s been flattened by the water. The ocean is blue-gold beneath the late-afternoon sun. She focuses on following each wave in from a far-off point. 

The longer she stands there the worse she feels. She should feel free—everything’s signed, everything’s done. She can go where she wants and do what she pleases, and Nick can’t. But she doesn’t feel like she’s won anything. She feels like a failure. 

She’s been doing all right without Nick. She has a good life—a best friend, a beautiful house, successful children, a thriving business. She dreads sleeping alone, but she’s been sleeping mostly alone for months, and it’s not as if she sleeps much better on the nights when there are fireworks on the beach or a weird noise out in the studio and Frankie climbs into bed next to her. 

Practically speaking, nothing much has changed today, but there’s something symbolic about real signatures on real paper. With every form the lawyer handed her, she felt the weight of her second divorce sink in more deeply. On each page, she looked at Nick’s signature—already on every document, as his attorney visited him in prison with all the paperwork—before she signed her name. 

She failed. She wasn’t flexible enough to make it work. She doesn’t have the energy to try again. Not with Nick when he gets out of prison. Not with the perfect man who might step into her life tomorrow. That part of her life is over now.

A hand squeezes Grace’s shoulder and she startles. She turns around to see Frankie gasping for breath; she must have been even more lost in thought than she realized to not have heard her approach.

“I’m sorry,” Frankie says, heaving the words with great effort. “Got my CSA pick-up time mixed up.” She puts her hands on her thighs and leans down to breathe. “Had to get the vegetables. J-M just dropped me off. Me and a lot of beets. And I mean a _lot_ of beets. Again.” She stands up straight. “I’m an asshole.” 

“It’s fine,” Grace says, hoping Frankie interprets correctly: it’s not fine. Nothing is fine. She must look and sound awful, because Frankie’s shoulders slump and her face softens from running-late remorse into genuine sympathy. 

For a few seconds, Grace is afraid Frankie is going to try to cheer her up right away, but Frankie’s too good. She knows her too well. “I’ll do my best to make it a decent night,” Frankie says in a low tone with just a hint of deliberate casualness. “That’s gonna involve some light snuggling, so get your complaints out now.” 

Grace doesn’t have the energy to complain. She doesn’t want to be suffocated, but it’s a relief that Frankie has a plan for this first divorced day, even if it was slightly thwarted by vegetables. All Grace has to do is give in.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and rinse off the law office,” Frankie says when they’re back in the house.

Grace goes upstairs and takes a shower without getting her hair wet. She adjusts the faucet so the water runs hotter than usual, imagines the heat slicing away at her as the water runs down her back. She isn’t sure how long she stands there, but she keeps inching up the heat; eventually she adjusts to even the hottest temperature she tries before the hot water starts to run out. Her back itches as she towels off. She rubs the edge of the towel over the mirror to defog a space for her to see and cranes her neck to look at her back. It’s covered in big pink blotches and streaky stripes where she must have scratched her skin with her fingernails without realizing it. 

She wonders if she can get away without wearing real clothes even though it can’t be much past 5 p.m., then remembers that Frankie is the least likely person in the world to judge another human for choosing to be comfortable. She forgoes a bra, pulling on a black camisole followed by a soft grey sweater. She chooses white cotton underwear and black yoga pants, pushes her feet into the house slippers at the side of her bed, and wanders back down to the kitchen as soon as she’s dressed.

“Well, now I have to go change,” Frankie says as soon as she sees her. “You know I’m a sympathetic sweatpants-wearer. Make yourself a drink and I’ll be right back.”

As soon as Frankie returns from the studio in her own pajamas, she immediately rushes upstairs. A few minutes later, she comes back with pillows Grace recognizes from her own bed. Grace drinks her martini standing up at the kitchen counter while Frankie scurries around. Frankie turns the couch into a daybed with layers of blankets to lie on top of, a couple more folded on top to use as covers, and a nest of pillows. 

“Grace?” Frankie calls.

The whole house had gone quiet and Grace hadn’t noticed. “Coming,” she says. She sets her empty martini glass by the sink and walks into the living room. She’s greeted by the sight of Frankie seated on the couch-turned-daybed, back cradled by the pillows from Grace’s bed, legs stretched out across the length of the blanket-covered couch cushions. There are no lights on, and the fading light of early evening makes all the surfaces shadowy and soft. 

“Come sit,” Frankie says softly.

“Where?”

Frankie crooks her right leg into a ninety-degree angle, making room. She pats the surface between her legs. “Right here.” 

This seems a bit more involved than “light snuggling,” but Grace complies, and before she can figure out what to do with her body once she’s sat down, Frankie wraps her arms gently around her middle—Frankie has been so kind to her this year, has always been there, and it’s so overwhelmingly nice—and suggests that Grace turn onto her side and lean over so she can lie against Frankie’s chest.

She’s a little hungry and she wants another drink and she’s a complete failure in life. At first, aside from Frankie’s kindness, those failures are all she can think about. But eventually, the longer she lays slumped on top of Frankie, Grace closes her eyes and her eyelids immediately feel heavy. They want to stay closed. Her thoughts drain away then. 

Frankie rubs her fingertips down the sleeve of Grace’s sweater, running from her shoulder to her wrist. There’s nothing extraordinary about the touch itself, but where a touch from Frankie might have felt in the past like a hug, like a comfort, this touch zings its way up and down her spine. Frankie does it again and Grace’s abdomen feels weightless and strange. She gasps a little, and Grace feels herself lift slightly as Frankie takes more air into her lungs. Grace’s hands are folded in front of her chest, and Frankie opens them, touches her palms, the back of her hands, her fingers. “You missing him?” Frankie asks, her voice a gentle rumble.

Nick was funny and kind—at least to her—and he didn’t need her to be funny and kind but thought the best of her anyway. He wasn’t honest with her when the Feds started to catch up with him, and she’ll never know if it was because he was afraid to tell her the truth or because he was confident enough to believe he’d never have to. He was jealous of Frankie. He didn’t require too much of Grace—he didn’t need everything from her—but there was a widening gulf between what he wanted and what she could give, and the gulf didn’t feel treacherous because she didn’t even try to traverse it. 

“No,” Grace says. “No, I’m just—” She hopes Frankie will fill in the word, but Frankie is quiet. “I’m just sad.” 

“I love you, ya know,” Frankie whispers.

“Yeah,” Grace whispers back. She encloses one of Frankie’s hands in hers. “I love you, too.” 

“I’m so proud of you,” she says. She kisses the top of Grace’s head.

Grace huffs a laugh. “Why?”

“It hasn’t been an easy year, but you’re getting through it, and you’re—” Frankie returns to playing with Grace’s sleeve, and then she tightens her hold on Grace just slightly, just enough to feel like a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here with me. I’m so proud of you.” 

Grace tightens her grip on Frankie, too. They lie like that for a while, and eventually Grace’s thoughts quiet enough that can feel Frankie’s heartbeat in her ear. It isn’t even dinner time yet, but she feels like she could sleep for hours. Before she’s too sleepy to move, she reaches for one of the blankets and pulls it over their bodies. Frankie sighs happily about the addition of warmth. She rubs Grace’s shoulder, trails a hand down her side, rubs the parts of her back she can reach in their current position. “You’re gonna be fine,” Frankie says. 

The words are so simple, so precious. They settle over Grace’s body like another blanket. The layer is almost too hot, too much, so she turns in Frankie’s grip until her back is flush against Frankie’s front. She settles back down, but when she leans back and tries to relax, her head tips back against Frankie’s shoulder, chin pointed up, baring the length of her neck. Frankie could do anything, Grace thinks—she imagines how vulnerable she looks, sheltering in Frankie’s arms with her neck bared. But Frankie does nothing but squeeze her middle again, then run her hands over Grace’s arms until she finds Grace’s hands and holds them in hers.

Then Frankie speaks. “You’re so beautiful.”

The praise lands with a tender ache between Grace’s legs. Her eyes squeeze more tightly shut even as she manages to thank Frankie for the compliment. She pushes back the thoughts that want her to figure out why it turns her on to lie against Frankie and absorb her kindness. She drifts more deeply into the feeling. Her eyes are closed; she isn’t actually here. With her eyes closed she doesn’t have to feel embarrassed that Frankie’s pride in her turns her on. She doesn’t have to think too hard about why. She slides her hands out of Frankie’s and stutters her fingers against Frankie’s fingers, traces lines and loops into Frankie’s arms, sighs with pleasure at the patterns of her own creation.

“Whatever you want to do,” Frankie murmurs. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.” 

The words pull Grace just far enough into reality to sense the danger here. She knows she could ask Frankie to touch her, could ask to touch Frankie, could cross that boundary and find herself welcomed and loved on the other side. The danger isn’t rejection or regret. It’s the danger of suddenness, of travel without talking very much first. They’ve chosen each other so many times, but this is a different, deeper choice.

It occurs to her that she doesn’t have to make a decision right away, so she continues to trade touches with Frankie. Hands and wrists and arms. Frankie fills Grace up with soft, fervent praise. She repeats each compliment: _You’re so beautiful. You’re so smart. You’re such a brave person. I’m glad you’re here with me._ Grace’s nerves tingle from the top of her scalp to the soles of her feet. When neither of them can pretend her nipples aren’t straining against the fabric of her sweater, Frankie starts to explore the slope of one of Grace’s breasts with her fingertips. “Thank you,” Grace moans without meaning to, eyes open again, and in response Frankie lifts the hem of her sweater and helps to pull it off. Frankie sets the sweater on the floor next to the couch. Before she can talk herself out of it, Grace sits up enough to take her tank top off too. 

As soon as Grace is settled back against her, Frankie returns her fingertips to Grace’s breast. “Can I touch you here?”

“Yes.” 

Grace closes her eyes again. Frankie is so warm, her body like a nest or cradle, both hands darting from Grace’s breasts down her ribs and belly and back up again. The back of the couch runs the length of the right side of their bodies, and it feels warm and firm. The blanket, now tangled over her lap, provides a comforting weight. 

It takes nearly an hour for Grace to feel able to touch herself. An hour of praise. An hour of being held. An hour of Frankie gentle and firm behind and beneath and around her. She lets the desire pool in her stomach until there’s so much of it that she feels slippery between her legs. Her clit is so engorged it feels like something she has to deal with. She could get up, make some flimsy excuse and rush topless and half-finished to the imperfect privacy of her bedroom, but she knows she can’t do that—Frankie made this feeling, there’s no denying it anymore, and she has to resolve it with Frankie there.

When she can’t wait any longer, she pushes the blanket off her overheated body and mutters “I have to take some pressure off.” Before she loses her nerve, she shoves her hand beneath the waistband of her yoga pants and into her underwear, against her swollen self.

“That’s it,” Frankie murmurs. She slides a hand down from Grace’s breast and touches Grace’s thigh, holds it long enough to help Grace open her thighs a little wider. The resulting strain in her muscles is slight but potent, and it makes Grace roll her hips in earnest. Frankie joins her hand to Grace’s, and Grace gasps at the sight of their hands working together beneath the fabric. “Let’s make you feel good,” Frankie says. 

It feels incredible. She’s able to touch herself in the exact places she needs, and Frankie’s fingers rub against her own like she’s learning the same places. Frankie strengthens the touches, makes them land with more power. Every touch flutters through her, radiates from her core to her limbs.

After a few minutes, Frankie takes away the hand that had still held onto Grace’s ribcage. She shifts, making room to touch her own core without letting go of Grace’s. “I’m touching myself,” she moans into Grace’s neck. “I need you to know—”

“I know.” Grace moves faster, so fast she’ll hurt her wrist if she doesn’t come soon—even with Frankie’s hand there to stabilize—but it’s worth it. She’s nearly there. “I’m about to—Frankie, I’m almost—” The words turn to a cry as she comes into her hand, Frankie’s fingers woven between her own. Together they press their soaked fingers against her until she’s ridden out every aftershock and her hips finally go still. 

“Grace,” Frankie whispers, slowly pulling her hand out of Grace’s pants, her fingers tracing against Grace’s on the way up, the motion delicate against the urgency in her voice. “Grace, please.”

Grace rotates within Frankie’s embrace, pushes herself more firmly against the back of the couch so she has room to kiss Frankie’s neck, nibble the skin beneath her ear, and press a brief kiss to Frankie’s lips. Her hand is still wet, and she searches by feel alone for the place where Frankie is touching herself, presses her hand to the outside of Frankie’s loose pajama pants, marvels at the feel of Frankie moving quickly against herself. She’s beautiful, all speed and pained pleasure, all desperation for more. “You can do it, Frankie,” Grace says quietly. “You’ll feel so good. You need it.” 

“I need it,” Frankie repeats with a gasp. She comes then, chin dropping against her chest, the hand inside her pants slowing, seeing the orgasm through. Grace doesn’t know where to look—at Frankie’s furrowed brow? The quiver at the corners of her mouth? The movement of her hand? 

Eventually, Frankie shudders to a stop. She pulls her hand out of her pants almost sheepishly, lets it hover in the air like she doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Why did we do that?” Grace asks, unable to stop the sentence from forming. She hasn’t caught her breath yet. 

Frankie seems too calmed by the release to panic at the question, but her voice is serious. “It felt good. Did it feel good to you?”

Grace nods and Frankie recalibrates their positions, encouraging Grace to lie back down on her side so she’s comfortable. Grace barely has time to think about being a little cold before Frankie bundles her up in her arms again and pulls the blanket back over their bodies.

“It doesn't have to be a big deal,” Frankie says. “It's just something that happened.”

A little chill rushes Grace’s spine. “Oh,” she says. “Okay. That’s—that’s fine.” She wonders if it would be possible to leave the couch with dignity. 

But then Frankie rests her hand on Grace’s back. The warmth spreads. 

“It can happen whenever you want,” Frankie says. “Trust me, I’m good with it.” 

Grace is wide awake. “What do _you_ want?” she asks.

“I want this.”

⁂

Grace wakes up without any idea what time it is. She still wears her contacts, and her eyes feel dry and irritated. She has to go to the bathroom, and her mouth is parched. A toothbrush wouldn’t hurt, either. She’s sprawled on a warm, uneven surface. The surface is Frankie.

She tries to move subtly as she rolls off of Frankie and stands up. Her sweater and tank top are somewhere on the floor, but she can’t see well enough to find them. Her phone lights up with the arrival of a new message, so she picks it up from the coffee table before heading upstairs. It’s only 10:30 p.m. On most nights, she’d only now be starting to fall asleep. The message that made it possible to find her phone is a spam text from an unknown number that must have escaped the junk filter: “need a playmayt! Is it u?? bit.ly/fun4neighbor785=3.”

She smiles a little as she staggers upstairs, topless and still a bit disoriented, the awareness of what she and Frankie did together not so much a coherent memory as a presence hovering insistently at the edge of her conscious reality. Fuck the neighborhood, she thinks. Apparently there’s a playmate right in her own home. Someone who’s been there all along, mostly. Someone she—her thoughts are starting to catch up to her feelings—someone she already loves. 

When she’s cleaned up and has her regular pajamas on she feels more awake. Her memory coheres, all the frenetic details rushing back, and she’s a little shocked at herself, a little shocked at Frankie. She doesn’t know what to do—if she stays upstairs and tries to sleep in her own bed, it’ll feel like she’s abandoning Frankie and the night they’ve had. But it could feel like an interruption to go back downstairs and risk waking Frankie up to join her again. And if Grace lets her spend an entire night on that couch—alone or with company—Frankie’s back will be entirely uncooperative tomorrow. Not to mention her own knees. 

It’s the imagined image of them both in the morning, irritable and awkward and in physical pain, that settles it. She walks downstairs, turning the stair light on to make it easier to see. Frankie has barely moved from the position she was in when she left her. Grace stands over her for a moment, voice caught in her throat. “Frankie,” she finally whispers. Nothing. She sits down, puts a hand on Frankie’s arm, and Frankie startles. 

“You put a shirt on,” Frankie says as soon as her eyes are open enough to see. “Not fair.” 

Grace chuckles. “Your back’s gonna hate you in the morning.” 

“I don’t care.” 

“Come upstairs with me,” Grace whispers.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Bring the pillows you stole from my bed.”

⁂

The following day passes in a mostly ordinary fashion, although they’re a little more deferential to each other than usual. Grace doesn’t wander into the studio while Frankie’s out there painting, and when Grace cooks dinner Frankie doesn’t hover near the island asking for tastes. That night, however, they do something far from ordinary: they get drunk together. Although they’ve shared drinks plenty of times, Frankie isn’t like Grace; she doesn’t crave drunkenness.

One time—the closest she and Frankie ever got to really talking about why she drinks—Frankie explained that being drunk is to feel away from home, like she’s visiting her own body and isn’t sure how hospitable it is. Grace’s instinct was to say that it’s different for her, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe the difference is that Grace likes the leaving, likes the sensation of being a visitor. The fear that kicks in for Frankie when she seems too strange to herself doesn’t kick in for Grace. The feeling of uncontrolled travel is never the reason she stops. 

It’s a warm night, and Grace asks Frankie to join her on one of the patio benches. She opens a chilled bottle of dry white wine and they split it. A breeze meanders in from the ocean, and the conversation is like the breeze.

Although they both know it’ll put Frankie even further beyond her typical occasional glass or two, Grace suggests they open a second bottle and Frankie agrees. It feels safe. The look in Frankie’s eyes tells her she knows exactly where she is, and that she doesn’t mind slipping under the spell of the wine.

“Hey,” Frankie says after she’s swallowed the first sip from the fresh bottle. “Remember when we were out here that night after Jack and I got into that fight at Robert and Sol’s?”

“Of course I do.” Nick had just returned home from a trip, and Grace hadn’t seen him yet, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Frankie alone in the house. She’d told Frankie she’d stay with her until she was okay, and Frankie wasn’t okay—but then she did leave, not because Frankie asked her to but because Jack showed up, and wasn’t that the same thing? Jack was back, and by the transitive property Frankie was okay, and Grace could make her escape to welcome Nick home even if the parting was a little bittersweet. 

“You knew Jack was there when you told me you wished you didn’t have to go.” 

Grace nods. “I suppose I did.” She replays the night again: Frankie told her she wasn’t okay—because she’d really liked Jack—and then Jack showed up, maybe even started to say something, and that was when she and Frankie whispered to each other that they wished they didn’t have to part. Grace had told herself it was for the best that she got out of Jack’s way that night—Frankie’s reconciliation with Jack happened after a paltry couple of hours apart. Frankie really liked him, after all. And Grace could have a little time back, time she could spend on Nick. 

“You definitely did.” Frankie smiles. “Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if Jack hadn’t come back. If he hadn’t let himself in the house and come out back to find us.” 

Grace returns the smile. “Probably nothing,” she says, and takes a drink. “You’d just broken up with someone. Well, you thought you had. You were sad.” 

“You were sad about Nick last night and we had sex.” 

Grace chokes on her wine. “Nick and I were over a long time ago,” she says when she regains the ability to speak. 

Frankie nods thoughtfully. “I meant what I said that night, though. I didn’t want you to go.” 

“I meant what I said, too. And I guess we’ll never know what might have happened.” She’d been excited about the second bottle, but now she reaches for the cork and uses it to stop up the bottle before either of them can pour any more. “We should get some sleep,” she says. 

Frankie dips her finger into a ring of condensation, swirls it into a streaky pattern Grace can’t follow. “It wouldn't have been nothing. The night Jack came back. If he...didn't come back." Frankie squares her jaw. “Even if we’d just hung out. It would’ve been cool.” 

"You're right."

"I don’t want to say goodnight.” 

Grace looks into her. Her eyes are a little glassy, but she’s there, probably half imagining the night of her short-lived reunion with Jack, half imagining what she now thinks she wanted to happen instead, what she wants to happen now. “Okay,” Grace says. “Come upstairs.” 

When they’re in bed, Frankie doesn’t turn out her bedside lamp. She turns to Grace, reaches out, grips her shoulder. 

Grace thinks she should say _goodnight_ , or _sweet dreams_ , or _did you drink enough water?_ Something gentle. “It wasn’t because I was sad,” she says. “Last night, I mean.” 

“It started out that way—”

“It didn’t end that way.” 

A lazy grin spreads across Frankie’s face. “You want some more?”

“Yes,” Grace says, her inhibitions lowered enough that she doesn’t demure, doesn’t stop to wonder what it means. The reward is immediate. Before she knows it, she’s naked from the waist down and her pajama top is unbuttoned and Frankie’s fingers are coated in lube and she’s as gentle as Grace had wanted to be when she tried to end the night. Frankie keeps it pretty simple—slow, deliberate touches, each stroke something to savor. 

“How’s this?” Frankie murmurs. 

“Almost perfect.” It isn’t awkward when Grace finds Frankie’s hand, and adjusts the focus of her fingers very slightly, because Frankie seems to delight in the instruction. After the adjustment it actually is perfect. When she comes, everything blurs and dims, and the room stops its slight spin. Frankie beams down at her and pecks her on the lips, and Grace is startled to realize that until now, they'd hardly kissed.

⁂

“How’re you feeling?” Grace whispers the next morning when Frankie starts to stir next to her in bed.

“Ughhhhh,” Frankie moans. 

“Wait here.” 

“As if I could move.”

The second Grace stands up and cool air hits her legs, she realizes she must have slept mostly naked last night. She tries not to be too awkwardly frantic as she pulls her pajama pants back on. “I’ll be right back,” she says as soon as she’s decent. 

It’s just a trip to the bathroom for a water refill and ibuprofen for Frankie, but Grace’s heart pounds as she fills the glass the perfect amount and shakes two perfectly round brown pills from the bottle of Advil in the medicine cabinet. _Calm down_ , she tells herself. _Care_ , she tells herself. To take care not to spill or drop anything. To take care of Frankie.

“Can you eat?” Grace asks, perched on Frankie’s side of the bed. She watches Frankie down the pills and guzzle the water. When she’s swallowed, Frankie manages a quivery, shrug-y sort of nod, so Grace leaves her long enough to make coffee and toast and eggs for them both. She cracks two eggs into a pan once everything else is going. One yolk breaks, but the other stays intact, a neat little sun in a bleached-out sky. 

Frankie stabs the perfect breakfast-in-bed egg yolk right away, smiles at the way the yellow bleeds. “The only thing that would make this any more amazing is if it came from one of our very own chickens.” 

Grace chuckles. “I can tell you’re gonna live if you’re well enough to bring up chickens.”

“No hangover could be powerful enough to stop me from thinking about chickens.”

That night, Frankie makes a pitcher of unsweetened iced tea to drink with dinner. “Never drinking again, obviously,” she says. “And by ‘never’ I mean not for at least three more days.” 

Grace could totally, one hundred percent, absolutely drink again. Right now. But she fills her glass with iced tea. The crisp, almost bitter flavor is good to her mouth, good to her throat. 

Hours later, lying in her bed next to Frankie, it takes Grace an extra long time to fall asleep. The word _care_ comes back to her as she starts to drift.

⁂

Grace turns to Frankie after she’s mostly recovered from her orgasm. It’s another warm night, and as her breathing quiets the sound of the ocean seems to reach into the open window to praise and soothe. “I’ve _never_ come that fast before,” she admits. “Not with another person.” She expects Frankie to brush aside the praise, or preen a little but in the half-joking way that shows she doesn’t actually think all that much of herself. She does no such thing; instead of deflecting, she waits for Grace to say more. “I think it’s because I’ve always felt such extreme ways about you,” Grace continues. “I couldn’t stand being around you, you were like, like an _itch_ , and then it changed—” She shuts her eyes, thinking more about what she’s saying, the way she’s talking as if she’s answering a question no one asked. “I loved you so much.” She presses her fingers to her eyelids. 

“I loved you, too,” Frankie says. “So much.” 

They both knew it at the time—knew all the ways it was possible back then, as they built a home together—but it feels different now, to speak of their past tense love after everything new that’s happened. 

“I’m ready to take the plunge,” Frankie announces after a pause.

“Oh God,” Grace says with a laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing metaphorical.” Frankie flashes her most amused smile—the one that hovers somewhere in the vicinity of self-awareness without going all the way in. “I’m ready in a very literal sense. I’m ready to be inside you.” 

“Oh!” She hadn’t realized Frankie hadn’t been ready before now. It wasn’t anything they’d talked about—they hardly talk about it at all— 

“Do you want to keep going?” 

Grace nods. “Yes.” She’s naked from the waist down, covered up with the sheet. “I—” 

“What?”

“I want you inside me,” she says. 

Frankie pulls the sheet down a little, just a few inches, and holds Grace’s hips while Grace spreads her legs more, reaches down to support Grace’s knee while she bends. When she’s opened up they lie there for a while, getting used to it. Grace touches her breasts through her pajama top, her evened-out breaths turning to gasps again. Frankie scoots down the bed a little and lies on her stomach, propped up on one of her elbows. She coats three of her fingers in lube, brushes around and against Grace’s clit, traces her way down until she finds her entrance. 

“How much do you want it?” Frankie murmurs.

“A lot.”

“One finger at first.”

“No!” Grace cries, betrayed at having been set up. “I need more than that.”

“Just at first.” Frankie enters her slowly with her index finger. 

“More,” Grace says immediately.

“Okay,” Frankie whispers. She pulls out. Her finger glistens. She returns to Grace with two fingers, easing them in as slowly as before. It’s considerably tighter with two. Grace moans as Frankie starts to move her fingers in deeper, then partially out, then in deeper again. Her muscles clench around Frankie’s fingers. 

“I can take three,” Grace mutters. “Please try it Frankie, come on, please give me more—”

Three is more difficult. Frankie makes a triangle of her middle three fingers and pauses, just nudging Grace’s entrance. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Grace says. Her eyes are closed. She arches her chin towards the ceiling. “You’ll be gentle, Frankie. I know you’ll be gentle.” 

Frankie is gentle. She stops to coat her fingers in more lube. “I wanna feel you. I wanna be all the way inside you.”

When Frankie’s in with three fingers, the difference is significant. It’s perfect. Grace is full enough to feel out of control of what happens next. Her voice is her only instrument of influence. It takes a long time to build back up, for her body to catch up to Frankie’s rhythm and give her what she wants. She gasps a whole series of gasps, then moans until the moment she starts to come, then gasps through the crescendo. When she’s done, she rolls into Frankie, throws an arm around her neck and reaches with the other until she can touch between her legs long enough for Frankie to come, and again, and again.

⁂

The days pass feverishly. Time speeds up—suddenly it’s three in the morning and they haven’t slept at all, or else they fall into bed exhausted at nine, with barely enough energy to bicker over half a crossword. Frankie says “Happy Tuesday,” but it’s actually Thursday. Grace catches herself thinking November has lasted forever, but when she checks the calendar it’s been December for two days.

“Do you think what we're doing is weird?” Grace asks one night, sometime between nine p.m. and three a.m. She’s tucked against Frankie, warm beneath the covers, nothing between herself and sleep except the answer to this question.

Frankie shrugs. It jostles Grace. “I'm sure there are plenty of people doing way weirder stuff right now. There's probably someone on our street doing weirder stuff right now.”

“Ugh, like Martin.”

“Grace. Why mention that troll after we’ve had such a lovely evening together?” Frankie’s description isn’t physical. Martin is the menace of the neighborhood Nextdoor site, which Grace has hate-read on and off for years, frequently subjecting Frankie to dramatic readings of his worst posts.

The lovely evening is the latest reason Grace has asked the question about weirdness. In theory, Grace believes in sexual freedom, that consenting adults should have whatever kinds of interactions they want to have in bed. Or wherever else. But sometimes she wonders what it means—if it’s weird—that she and Frankie like to masturbate in each other’s laps so much. _I want to see you love yourself_ , Frankie tells her. _Be good to yourself. Love yourself._ She likes it when Grace faces her, straddling her lap while she works her hand between her legs, Frankie’s arms wrapped around her, supporting her back. 

_Give yourself what you need_ , Grace often tells Frankie, and the first time she adds _love_ , says _Give yourself love_ , the temperature in the room skyrockets. She likes to sit propped up in bed or sideways on the couch so she can cradle Frankie close, her breasts pressed into Frankie’s back while Frankie touches herself. 

Sometimes only one of them does it before they’re ready to go to sleep, comfortable and happy, because one of them needs the love of touch and the other only the love of observation, of witness. Sometimes, like tonight, they both take their turn and then touch each other more when that’s done, keep going because they’re wide awake to each other, greedy for every shred and scrap of experience.

“Honey, everything’s weird,” Frankie says when it’s clear she’s not going to receive an apology for Martin. “It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

“It’s actually good.”

Deep in the realm of weird things, Frankie makes a very sour, very vegetarian approximation of borscht with the last of the beets from the CSA share she picked up the day Grace’s divorce became final. It makes no sense that just under two weeks have passed since that day. They hold up their bowls at the dinner table and toast the end of the reign of the beets. 

The next day Grace drives Frankie and Joan-Margaret to pick up the next CSA box; it’s half beets, half greens.

“Beet life is our life now,” Frankie says a little mournfully, even though she’s told Grace she kind of likes the wet earth taste and the way the beets turn everything in the kitchen into an art project with semi-permanent magenta dye. 

“Could be worse,” Grace says.

“Very true,” says Frankie.

“You two look marvelous,” J-M shouts from the backseat. “The all-beet diet agrees with you.”

That night, Grace plunges her hands into a sink full of dishes and soapy beet-bright water. She appreciates the citrusy soap and the shade of pink and the warmth of the water with a stupid sort of simplicity; lately it’s as if she’s always a tiny bit high, and every sense is a wonder. “I think it’s great that we’re doing this,” she says. She hopes Frankie hears this statement as Grace’s own answer to the questions she’s been asking since the night it started: _Why did we do this? Is this weird?_ She’s leaving gender out of it, but she hopes Frankie hears the gender in the statement, too. They are two women in the kitchen, two women in a household, two women in bed— 

“Yeah,” Frankie says. “The hand wash-only items were piling up.” She polishes a baking dish with a towel until it’s dry.

“No. This.” The corners of Grace’s mouth twitch slightly. She tells herself to stay casual. “Sleeping together.”

Frankie sets down her towel. “Oh, totally. It’s totally great.” Her expression turns impish. “In fact, we could leave these bad boys in the sink to soak and—” 

“No way,” Grace says through laughter. She sobers. “It’s so much better when it’s a reward. When you’ve done whatever you had to do and then you—”

“—finally get to do what you want to do.”

They’re talking about finishing a chore so they can make out, but it’s more than that, Grace thinks. It’s realizing the only things she dreads are the big, unspeakable things everyone dreads when the end of life is—not an immediate concern, exactly, but an eventual horizon she must consider. To have lived much of a life, all the little dreaded moments and successes and heartaches and joys adding up, and then to have this blessing. This thing with Frankie is an answer to her life, and it’s also something smaller—smaller and just as precious. The ability to fuck away a miserable day, the fucking as an answer to the misery. The ability to coast through any chore knowing she’ll end the day reasonably happy, or extremely happy. All the times Frankie insists Grace must love herself as much as they love each other, and that she wants to watch.

⁂

“You could totally date again, you know,” Mallory says. She’s in town for the weekend, and they’re having lunch just the two of them at Grace’s suggestion. The bistro Grace has chosen opened after Mallory left, and when she and Frankie tried it out a few weeks before the divorce was final Grace surprised herself with a thought: _Mal would love this place._ When Grace asked her to lunch, Mallory seemed pleasantly surprised; the reaction pained Grace a little, but only a little. Now that they’re actually live and in person with club sandwiches and pinot grigio, the guilt is totally gone, replaced with a very particular brand of uncomfortable annoyance.

Grace rolls her eyes. “I think I’m good.” 

“I mean, yeah, of course you don’t _need_ a man. I’m not suggesting you find a third husband.” Mallory’s had a lot of bright ideas about other people’s lives ever since she moved to San Francisco and became Brianna’s boss. Grace doesn’t appreciate the subtle emphasis Mallory places on “third.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

“That you have some fun!” Mallory says. “Live a little! There’d be a line of guys out the door.”

“What door?” 

Last night Grace was naked in the candlelight when she walked up to Frankie, who already sat on the bed with her legs dangling down to the floor, a black leather harness gripped loosely in her hands. She held onto Frankie’s shoulders for balance while she stepped into the harness, then stood silent between Frankie’s legs while Frankie pulled and adjusted the straps against her hips, around her waist. 

“ _Mom_ ,” Mallory says. She must think Grace doesn’t believe her. “There are _so many_ great guys out there—well, not _so many_ , but lots and lots, and most of them would think they were the luckiest guy on the planet for getting to take you out.” 

“Well, maybe I don’t want to go out with a guy. Maybe I’m over all that.” It was difficult to adjust to wearing a dildo at first, difficult to figure out how to maneuver it the way she wanted, the way Frankie wanted. It was so different than using a vibrator, which was easier to control but less like an extension of the body. There was no artifice with a vibrator, only joy, and last night trying the strap-on for the first time she had to consider not only the toy but her terrible real knee and her better but imperfectly cooperative fake knee. She’d pictured herself—and the thought made her blush even now—she’d pictured herself sliding easily into Frankie and going to town. It hadn’t worked that way, not at first, although—through laughter and some awkward logistical discussion—they got there eventually. The best part was still the before, when Frankie pulled the leather straps, pulled her closer, and the after, when Frankie unbuckled her and bent to kiss an indentation the buckle had dug into her right hip. Grace clears her throat. “Let’s change the subject.” 

For all her adamant insistence upon Grace’s potential happiness, Mallory is perfectly willing to talk about other things for the rest of lunch.

⁂

Grace’s arthritis has given her a bit of a happiness vacation over the last few weeks, but right at the start of sex it flares up.

“I’m sorry,” Grace says, trying and failing to flex her stiff, painful wrist. She wants to cry. 

“Baby, it’s okay. Can we use the vibrator?” Frankie looks up at Grace with a tiny smile. “I’ll drive.” 

“Of course, but—”

“That’s why it’s here,” Frankie reminds her. “One of the reasons why it’s here.” 

Partway through, she leans over to where Grace lies quietly next to her and touches Grace’s hand, asks if she feels able to rest it gently between Frankie’s legs, if she can be present there and promise not to do too much. Grace does as Frankie suggests, feeling the vibrations radiate in her fingers, wishing the entire time that the pressure and movement from the vibrator humming nearby originated from her.

“I'm sorry I couldn't touch you the way I wanted to,” Grace whispers when Frankie finishes and lies breathing in the dark.

“Are you kidding? The way you touched me was everything.”

After that night, it’s easier to be open about the modifications and adjustments they need to make for their injuries, their disabilities. Grace wears her wrist brace more often, not just for support on bad pain days but as fortification for future good days. When she notices Frankie clutching her lower back more frequently than usual, Grace does some online shopping for a new pillow and puts Frankie’s name on the shipping label without telling her. It’s worth it to listen to Frankie as she opens the box, as she goes from muttering “What the hell is this, I didn’t order anything” to cackling “Grace! You got us a sex wedge! You got us a fucking sex wedge, oh my God!” 

It isn’t all sex pillows and good vibrations, though. Sometimes it’s sudden pain, and the horrible way it interrupts and insists upon itself and makes life feel precarious. Sometimes it’s old habits: the drunken, frustrated, stoned, misunderstood ways that old habits try to maintain a grip on new arrangements. 

After a challenging day—Grace needs her cane to get around for the first time in ages, and she isn’t entirely sure why, and Frankie burns dinner and then manages to burn the leftovers she decides to heat up instead, and the whole house smells charred even with the kitchen windows open, and Frankie thinks Grace doesn’t talk enough, and Grace thinks Frankie is unrepentantly careless, and Frankie flounces off to the studio while Grace stays in the burnt smell and stands on her painful knees and tries to scrub a scorched baking sheet—it occurs to Grace that she isn’t sure if Frankie knows she’s in love with her. Isn’t entirely sure she can tell if Frankie feels that for her, either. It might be that their entire life together has felt like being in love, either that or it’s something brand-new that makes Grace strange, makes her an impossible fit. Again. If they don’t fix it, this might be the first night in weeks that Frankie sleeps out in the studio, and Grace doesn’t even know if Frankie knows the thing that’s suddenly the most important thing in the world. 

She’s given up and left the baking sheet to soak when Frankie comes back. “Our Lyft arrives in seventeen minutes,” Frankie says. She looks down at the phone in her hand. “Sixteen, now.” 

Grace doesn’t apologize for tonight or blurt _I’m in love with you_. “Where are we going?” she asks.

“I need to go out for pizza and I need you to come with me.” 

When their table is ready, Frankie takes Grace’s jacket and hangs it up on the coat rack near the table. She puts a hand on Grace’s back while she lowers herself into the booth, then takes the cane and props it up so it’s within easy reach. Grace feels taken care of, like the lady on the dates Mallory wants her to go on, cherished and treated well.

Frankie orders a pitcher of beer and doesn’t even pretend to consider asking for vegan cheese. It’s an unhealthy dinner. It’s a healthy dinner. It’s healthy to be two voices among many, surrounded by music and clinking glasses, each booth its own little world. Being with Frankie in the pizza parlor is like putting foam padding around the places that hurt. Something moldable and forgiving, something to absorb the shocks. 

⁂

Grace tends to see more of herself in Brianna than in Mallory, but she recognizes her regrettable influence in Mallory’s fervent belief in the concept of “should.” Even when Robert and Sol forget to mention they’ll be out of town and the first restaurant loses the reservation and Brianna herself says many times that she doesn’t want a family brunch for her birthday, Mallory insists on going through with the festivities she wants very badly to successfully plan. After everything else goes wrong, Mallory books a table at the restaurant Grace took her to last time she was in town. 

Attending the brunch, Frankie at her side, is like putting on an old self. All of Grace’s old brittleness, the old annoyance at everything, the old polite exterior—she feels these qualities settling over her, securing her in her place. Still, the brunch is pleasant enough. Brianna is grateful, although she doesn’t say so out loud. Grace recognizes herself there, too. 

No one in attendance would dare sing “Happy Birthday” to Brianna in public or private, but as the meal winds down, Brianna broaches the subject herself. “I can tell I’m another year older. My back pain has literally never been worse.” 

“Oh!” Frankie says helpfully. “How’s your pillow situation? For sleeping and for...whatever.”

“You should listen to Frankie,” Barry says, and Grace is too busy thinking about how Barry’s a suck-up to register the conversational danger.

“Thank you,” Frankie says. “There’s a wedge you can get, and it’s absolutely amazing—it supports _everything_ , and you’re young enough that I bet it’ll shave some years off. I’ll send you a link as soon as I find my phone—” 

“You mean a sex wedge,” Brianna says.

The bottom drops out of Grace’s stomach.

“Um,” Frankie says. She’s sitting close enough that Grace feels her tense up. “Maybe.”

Brianna rolls her eyes in Grace’s direction. “Mom, you don’t have to look so scandalized. I say we give Frankie props for having a little wedge in her life. Besides, we were all there when you got the idea for Vybrant, I mean, that’s a day I’ll never be able to scrub from my memory. How’s Vybrant—you know, your _sex toy company_ —doing these days?”

“Great,” Grace manages to say. It is great, but this year they’ve coasted. They have two solid products that continue to sell well, with impressive year-over-year growth among the target demographic. They’re even making some progress in younger markets. They could stand to focus more on marketing, but this year has included the whirlwind of a marriage, and the Rise Up, and a divorce, and this thing with Frankie. It’s been so much. Sometimes, in bed at night, she and Frankie joke about how they’re actually working on Vybrant right then, how they’re doing research. They’ve started to talk about designing a partner toy, although they don’t want to betray a fan base that’s embracing—often for the first time—the joys of solo experimentation. They don’t want to hurt those well-earned feelings. Suddenly, Grace wishes she could say as much. None of the graphic details, of course, but she wants to be honest about the way this year has gone. Wants to be honest about what’s really happening at Vybrant headquarters. “Things are trucking right along.”

Brianna narrows her eyes with inherited persistence. “I know you, Mom. There’s something else. You’re not embarrassed on Frankie’s behalf, are you?”

“No,” Frankie says softly. “She’s not.”

“I bought the pillow,” Grace says. As far as confessions go, it’s no _I might be a lesbian_ or _I’m in love with Frankie_ or _Hey, Bud and Coyote, I’ve been having sex with your mother_. It’s none of these, but it makes everyone at the brunch table freeze up all the same. Everyone but Frankie, who puts a hand on Grace’s back, and Brianna, who acts like she despises social discomfort but might be the least averse to other people’s social discomfort of everyone Grace knows.

“Wow,” Brianna says. “Wow wow wow wow wow.” 

“It’s no big deal,” Frankie says, though she presses her fingertips more firmly against Grace’s back.

“It most certainly is a big deal,” Brianna says.

“Didn’t you get a vibe?” Frankie asks. “And by vibe I don’t mean ‘vibrator’ but ‘intuition.’”

“Of course we got a vibe,” says Brianna.

“We did?” squeaks Mallory.

Brianna continues as if she didn’t hear her sister. “We just weren’t sure if _you_ did.”

“We did,” Frankie confirms.

“I think it’s great,” says Coyote.

“Great and not at all surprising, shocking, or disorienting,” says Bud. “This doesn’t disrupt my worldview whatsoever.”

Grace says nothing else for the rest of brunch, nothing but a “Happy birthday” muttered into Brianna’s ear during a surprisingly heartfelt goodbye hug.

⁂

“I upset you,” Frankie says near the end of the car ride home. “I don’t know why.”

She turns in the passenger seat to look at Grace. Grace’s peripheral vision reveals enough of Frankie’s expression for her mind to fill in the rest of the details—concern, anxiety, rapt attention. Her ridiculous perfect hair, which is pulled partially back with a silver clip, the rest flowing around her shoulders.

Grace drives a little longer without answering. Finally, when they’re nearly home, she speaks. “You keep saying it’s not a big deal.” _Twice_ , her brain corrects. Frankie’s said it twice. Twice in front of her, anyway, but who knows what she’s said to Joan-Margaret, or to the Del Taco crowd when Grace isn’t around, or to anyone at all.

“But isn’t that how it works? If we hadn’t just fallen into it, would it have happened? Would you have let it happen?”

The street blurs. Grace blinks back tears, finds a firmer grip on the steering wheel just in time to pull into the driveway and turn off the car. “I wish you’d never gone to Santa Fe with Jacob and I wish I’d never married Nick and I wish I hadn’t left you on the patio with Jack and I wish we had a hundred years together in this house with our stupid purple vibrators.” She bites down hard on her bottom lip. It works: the little shock of pain makes her face lose interest in crying. “With each other. And our vibrators aren’t stupid and I apologize for saying they are.” She gets out of the car and walks up to the house, unlocks the kitchen door as quickly as she can. Frankie rushes to follow, and Grace holds the door for her as they make their way inside.

When Grace turns around after shutting the door behind them, Frankie is right there. “I wish we could have that, too,” she says. “But I’m glad all those things happened. All those mistakes. If they hadn’t, this might not have gone the way it did. We wouldn’t have exactly what we have.” She reaches out and brushes a finger against Grace’s cheek. The touch tingles like it always does. She finds an escaped tear and collects it on the tip of her finger. “We don’t always see things the same way. It’s all right.” 

Grace nods. “I know. But this is a big deal.”

“It is. I know it is,” Frankie says. “Until today, I haven’t told a soul. Not because I don’t want to, but because it’s too precious, and I wasn’t sure what words to use. I’m sorry the sex wedge ended up making the announcement for us.”

“I like being in love with you,” Grace says. The words clear out room in her chest. “And I like the sex wedge.” 

Frankie closes her eyes. She walks forward, unseeing, the couple of steps it takes to reach Grace. She doesn’t stop until Grace’s back is pressed against the door. She opens her eyes and they stare at each other. “I like being in love with you, too.” She tilts her face expectantly, and Grace meets her for a kiss.

It’s ironic, and nothing she says out loud, but as they stand pressed together the moment begins to melt into something that isn’t a big deal at all. Not a big deal, but no less precious for it. A day like today may lack the possibility of infinite repetitions, but it will nevertheless repeat many times. Frankie deepens the kiss, and Grace smiles against her lips.

“Love yourself,” Frankie says in bed that night. “Love yourself,” she repeats when nothing happens right away. Then she turns out the light and pulls Grace closer and helps.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I would love to know what you think; I welcome all feedback, including constructive criticism!


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